A US equity fund and securities investment company identified as Birim LLC, has filed a law suit against Groupe Nduom and its Chairman, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom.
Birim LLC in the suit sighted by norvanreports, accused Dr Kwesi Nduom and Groupe Nduom of laundering some $63 million through its Virginia-based International Business Solutions company.
“The Nduom family defendants, by and through their ownership, control and use of defendants GN Bank, Gold Coast Fund Management and over 60 undercapitalised interrelated companies, collected several million dollars of depositor’s saving, investment contributions and insurance premiums, and in violation of U.S. and Ghana laws illegally laundered approximately $63,000,000 of depositors’ funds through its Virginia-based sham ‘procurement and consulting service’ company, International Business Solutions,” the suit stated.
The plaintiff, Birim LLC, describing Dr Nduom’s operations as shameful, the suit further stated that the purported “criminal scheme” involved “international money wire system – of inflated, over-invoiced and above-market rate fees disguised as payment for “management service.”
The plaintiff further allege that Groupe Nduom engaged in these illegalities for the “sole personal financial benefit of the Nduom family” and used his businesses as a conduit to “facilitate the unlawful acts” citing the recent cleanup in Ghana’s financial sector where the plaintiff claims “a substantial portion of its [GN Bank] loans were illegally made to Nduom-related entities without the benefit of appropriate risk assessments, managements or determinants”.
“Plaintiff further alleges that Nduom family defendants dominate and control the Corporate Defendants and the related 60 or more companies, and in so doing, these entities commingle their funds and other assets and fail to segregate the funds of the separate entities. There is also the unauthorised diversion of corporate funds or assets to non-corporate uses”.
“Groupe Nduom-GH (GN-GH) is wholly owned, dominated and controlled by Nduom and his family for the sole personal benefit of Nduom. Having failed to meet its regulator’s qualifying criteria, defendant GN-GH was initially downgraded and reclassified from a commercial banking house to a Savings and Loans Company. “On or about August 16, 2019, its license was formally revoked by its regulator, the central Bank of Ghana,” averred the suit.
The plaintiff believes that the “manipulations and liabilities” among Groupe Nduom’s entities effectively resulted in the “diversion of assets from one business entity to the Nduom defendants and their other entities to the detriment of creditors and depositors”.
Reliefs being sought by Birim LLC as assignors in the suit include “treble compensatory damages, as well as, consequential, exemplary and punitive damages in an amount to be determined by trial.”
The US-based equity firm also want the court to order for the “disgorgement of all profits, benefits and other compensation obtained by defendants including all ill-gotten gains from their illegal and criminal activities.”
Peruse details of suit below:
N.D. Ill. 20-cv-07198 dckt 000001_000 filed 2020-12-04 (1) by Fuaad Dodoo on Scribd
